Do Integration Policies Affect Immigrants' Voluntary Engagement? An Exploration at Switzerland's Subnational Level

This paper investigates whether integration policies influence immigrants' propensity to volunteer, the latter being an important element of immigrants' integration into the host society. By distinguishing different categories of integration policies at Switzerland's subnational level and applying a Bayesian multilevel approach, our results suggest varying policy effects: while policies fostering socio-structural rights enhance immigrants' propensity to volunteer, we observe a negative curvilinear relationship between cultural rights and obligations and immigrants' volunteerism implying that a combination of cultural entitlements and obligations is most conducive to immigrants' civic engagement.